A lonely group of us clustered at Magdalen roundabout at an early hour in the morning. The sky was clouded whilst we waited and as according to Juravich on the phone, Howarth was still asleep upstairs and Joe’s answerphone message of “what?” left us none the wiser we headed off to Shotover in the Minibus, mostly still asleep. Woken only to Brucey’s yowl of “what?!? are any blues running?!?” upon seeing Franco running in the opposite direction to Shotover.

After arriving at the park and meeting Joe and his two decaying bananas (don’t ask) we split into two groups to mark the course out. I had never previously realised that there is an art form to laying out flour arrows (and must admit I was very disappointed after the race when no-one commented on the fullness of the body and intricate design of the arrows whilst conserving flour to the best effect), and working out how best to set up the tape barriers to take cyclists at chest height whilst convincing morning strollers that we were in fact allowed to block off all the footpaths. In the sure knowledge that no-one would get lost around the course now (and if they did get lost they probably deserved it...) Jamie and I met Joe and Garrett who’d marked out the other half and Jamie pointed out on the map exactly where we were…whereupon Joe turned the map around and pointed we were actually on the other side of the park...

To the races then! The first race of the term is always an interesting one. Seeing who’s trained and who hasn’t and with the switch to the Sunday seeing the Freshers in race action for the first time! In a metaphorical miracle the sun came out to indicate our year of shame post-Varsity was over and our chance for redemption here, or maybe the clouds just moved, it was nice all the same. The ladies race was first. They set off like grey hounds on the out and back with Cathy taking a commanding 20m lead by the time they arrived back with the rest clustered into a large group led by Jess, Ali and Emily. All having to try and run around the offical who had decided that placing his chair right through the racing line would be the best possible call. Speaking of calls the race was interspersed by a call from Anupam “are the minibuses still going??? and what time does the race start?” to which the answer was “yes, in an hour- get moving!”. Cathy came back down the straight once again to take a dominant victory, closely followed by Emily, Ali and Jess (under the supervisory view of super-coach Paddy Wallace) and Hannah all in before the first RAF runner though fresher Emma Butterfield technically crossed the line first having managed to get lost somewhere on the course (I blame the course markers for not doing the job properly...). The girls secured maximum points and a convincing win for Oxford.

The men’s race initially looked a much tighter affair with three RAF runners taking up the challenge and creating a big lead in classic V formation against the Oxford chasing group led by Garret Ash with Ian Kimpton lurking in the group after the end of the out and back. With the RAF in such a powerful position, fears were raised in the OUCCC camp, but we had little to fear by the time they completed their first lap with Ian having struck out to lead confidently from Dave Cole of the RAF with Freshers Tom Samuel and Garrett strung out chasing interspersed by a RAF runner followed by Fresher Nat and Will Pooley leading the pack. OUCCC dominance was showing through and the positions stayed constant on the second lap with Ian extending his lead but Tom unable to catch Dave Cole, though still running superbly on his debut for the University as a true Freshman. Garrett and Nat taking the other scoring places split by a RAF man meant half of our team were former members of the Swarthmore College XC team and three quarters were under or post-grad freshers- great news for Varsity! Will Pooley showed the massive strides he has made despite his “too much beer” training regime finishing 7th in an impressive performance. Post-race humour brought about from Ian dragging himself over to the line and asking “did I really win?” convinced that there was someone ahead of him! (well…that or we lost another runner in there...)

Dissappearing back to Iffley road stopping only to drop off the results with Ian (poor chap) we were greeted with a wonderful post-race spread by Martin and Jon. After much admiring of the old style photographs and plans to recreate them we set at the tea. Some of the RAF came along as well including Dave Cole who has run this race everytime for 3 decades (well you weren’t expecting a report without a single statistic were you?!?) who thanked everyone who’d been involved with the day. After Pete Nordberg requested the Haribo was brought outside as his “legs hurt too much”, we all gathered there whilst Dave explained how to hot-wire the engine of the football pitch’s lawn-mower. Very impressive looking medals were handed out to the medallists in both races and pretty but not quite as nice medals handed out the winning teams.

Many thanks particularly to Dave Bruce for organising the whole event and to everyone who helped out on the day or ran the event. Next time whilst racing please try and avoid the chalk arrows- a lot of time goes into them!